


There's a boy who gives a shit, behind these walls

by wwwinteriscoming



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: And wonderful people making everything better, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Got your back, I am a shit tagger, Jack Zimmermann's life pretty much, M/M, Panic Attacks, SMH is their found family, This is the essence, Warning: Suicide Attempt, You will never dissuade me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 17:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7115320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wwwinteriscoming/pseuds/wwwinteriscoming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here’s the thing about being ugly and/or fat at one point in your life, the thing nobody ever tells you: you carry it with you. Rationally, you know you are now not that person anymore. Rationally, you know that you look objectively good now when you look in the mirror. But your heart of hearts carries the ghost of what you used to be around with you. It makes you sit and stand hunched in on yourself, like you used to, to not take up more space than absolutely necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. [birth, draft]

**Author's Note:**

> a) Essentially, this is my love for Jack Zimmerman making me its slave, because I wanted to write a cute ficlet about ugly baby!Jack and chubby kid!Jack becoming ripped!Jack and loving himself gradually (because I can relate extremely well (although I did not get ripped sadly)), but it turned into this monstrosity which literally tells the tale of Jack’s birth to Jack as we know him right now. Also, this is one of the many, many interpretations I have of what Jack’s life could have been like, don’t shoot me, please.
> 
> b) DISCLAIMER: Characters belong to Ngozi from her webcomic Check, Please! (omgcheckplease.tumblr.com) and fic title from Avril Lavigne
> 
> c) I actually am working on this, but I'm in a pretty bad mental place myself, so I can't promise quick updates as I tend to write lighter stuff when I'm this deep down

Here’s the thing about being ugly and/or fat at one point in your life, the thing nobody ever tells you: you carry it with you. Rationally, you know you are now not that person anymore. Rationally, you know that you look objectively good now when you look in the mirror. But your heart of hearts carries the ghost of what you used to be around with you. It makes you sit and stand hunched in on yourself, like you used to, to not take up more space than absolutely necessary. 

Jack was an ugly baby. He knows that. That’s the honest truth of it. There are tons of conspiracy theories about it, euphemisms, worse wordings. He’s accepted it as much as you can accept that before you’d even fully formed a consciousness there were millions of people with an opinion of you. People who hated you, who laughed at you, who envied you. All Jack had done at that point was being born. The simple act of being welcomed into the world by his parents had already put him in the global spotlight and under the weight that comes with that. 

His parents, of course, would not be phased. They both had an extremely busy schedule, but wanted Jack with them as much as possible. Questions about it, about “possible worries for the future” or other variations of the inappropriate and rude kind were waved off, laughed off with a “Look at my significant other, honestly, he’s a beauty compared to that, don’t you think?” or a withering glare, depending on the mood Alicia and Bob found themselves in. 

Nothing could dissuade them from bringing their child along with them. For shining their bright light on him. Not even Jack pooping in the Cup. Or confrontational photos, posing with their friends and their (quite frankly gorgeous) babies. They loved their son. They didn’t care who thought what. They’d been around long enough to be able to soldier on. They were stronger than this circus, stronger than the parasites, they would whisper to each other late at night when it got a little much, clutching each other tightly. 

He went from really ugly baby to okay looking child. An okay looking child who wasn’t okay at all. Mean children who couldn’t stomach what he had and they hadn’t, would taunt him about his baby appearance, about how awesome his parents were and how not awesome he was. How his English didn't sound right. How he didn’t belong. He didn’t play with them. He borrowed books from teachers and holed up in dark corners of playgrounds, losing himself to places and people and stories who were kinder to him. He liked history books best, because there had been so many people before him who had lived through so many worse things than him. He could do this. 

When he tied on skates and got a stick in his hands for the first time, the entire rick was practically filled to the brim with press as he wobbled to the ice and fell flat on his face within seconds, Bad Bob standing behind him, daring any of them to comment, he thought of soldiers in mud with torn limbs, gritted his teeth and got up. 

He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t a prodigy either. Which had two effects: it made the press trickle away slowly during his trainings and it also made him feel like a Giant Dissapointment. His parents did everything they could to look for something he could find solace in. Which they eventually did: food. Little Jack would get so excited about new and exciting foods or his favourites and a small light would flicker in his ice cold blue eyes and his parents couldn’t stomach not giving him at least that much. So Jack became a chubby kid. 

Which lead to the next scandal. “Supermodel and superhockeyer horrible parents?” and a dozen variations on that headline the papers when they’re spotted with Jack in casual wear (instead of his usual work out/ice hockey gear with which it’s harder to tell) and this time, they both flip their shit. This time, the model world and the hockey world thunder over the weak of mind and spirit, because how dare they? 

Jack Zimmerman is not photographed for a few years, but Jack Zimmerman himself feels like this is only his fault. He has lost all possible appeal. He is The Biggest Disappointment. His parents watch him become obsessed with healthy food and working out in a way that would scare most people, but they know their son. He has set his mind to this, so he will do it. They tell him as often as they can that they love him exactly the way he is and that he doesn’t need to change for them ever. This only makes Jack feel worse, because now not even his parents have faith that he could one day become appealing. 

He does, in fact, get appealing. With the help of the fiercest of models and hockeyers combined, Jack’s workout and diet regimen is of the kind that gives him a body sculpted by the Greek Gods. The photos start up again, but now it’s in the swoon tabloids, in the gossip magazines in the sections with hunks. Jack doesn’t know whether he feels better. He probably doesn’t. The models despair that they cannot get him a fashion sense and dote on him whenever he wears a suit.

Jack however still doesn’t feel appealing. After many nights spent staring blankly at the ceiling, many hours spent searching himself, searching his eyes, his face in the mirror, he hasn’t gotten a blink closer to no longer feeling like an empty shell. His parents notice, of course they do. They haven’t seen the hint of a spark in his eyes in a long time. 

Bob, because he’s just trying to help, suggests that he tag along with his team some more after practices and games. And that’s how Jack stumbles into alcohol. The guys on his team aren’t exactly his friends. They appreciate his game, so they will let him tag along and keep half an eye on him. They will return bro hugs. But they don’t talk about themselves and Jack doesn’t talk about himself either. Hockey is safe. And a subject difficult to exhaust. Alcohol doesn’t make him feel whole, but it lessens the sting of being empty. That’s all he’s ever sought. A cheap thrill. He does stupid shit intoxicated, but his parents couldn’t have been happier to see him.. Participating in life as much as he is.

Jack’s an adult now. Which means, as his father jokingly tells him with his son’s head in a head lock under his arm, that “he get the finer workings of himself checked out. To see if everything inside’s running just as smoothly as on the outside.” Jack haltingly laughs along. The therapist herself is okay. She’s a nice lady and after Jack tries as much as he can to pretend as if nothing is wrong at all, how could something be wrong, he’s got the perfect life, hasn’t he for a couple hours, she just puts a hand on his knee. Squeezes gently. “You can tell me, you know. I’m here to help. And nothing you say here will get past these four walls.”

She is the first person to see Jack cry since he was about four and he had an ugly cut in his forehead during practice and his father clutched his hand in the hospital waiting room to get stitches and whispered, like a mantra, for him to push through the pain. Push through it. Which had never been about crying in the first place, but which Jack had taken that way, because he’d become so accustomed to seeing everything his father did in such a light. He clenched his jaw, wiped the traitorous remaining tears from his face and held on so tight that he feared he’d break the hand of a lesser man.  
He told her everything and the tears flowed freely and his hands shook with the shame of it, with how much he hated himself for them. She didn’t remove her hand through his entire confessional, through two hours’ worth of him crying and shaking and making wrecked noises. He didn't tell her everything, doubted he ever could. But he told her more than he’d ever told a soul. He winced when he let out how much of a relief alcohol currently was, because after confiding in her, he didn’t want another therapist. And he feared she might get him another one. 

She didn’t look at him with pity, she didn’t cry with him, she didn’t tell him everything would be allright. Jack appreciated that. A lot. She looked a little sad, which he could understand. He was a sad creature with a sad life.

She squeezed him once more and then leaned back. 

“I think, quite frankly, that you might need some friends, mister Zimmermann” and the humor in her voice as she addressed him formally, the fact that she just gave him some advice, like she was in fact his friend, would have had him hooked in an instant if he hadn’t been already. 

Her name was Julia and Jack continued seeing her. She prescribed him pills for when the anxiety got too bad, but sternly pressed the prescription in his hands, warning him for overuse. Because he has an addictive personality. Flashbacks of wild nights flickered beneath his eye lids as he smiled shakily and told her he’ be careful.

This is where Kent enters. Kent found it adorable that Jack always hunched in on himself, trying to make himself as small as possible. Because here’s this gorgeous, tall, broad shouldered guy trying to be tiny. He didn’t know that he rendered of Julia’s efforts to make him sit straighter and stand taller, prouder useless by telling him that. Jack probably didn’t even know. 

Jack was a mystery to their team. This enigmatic dude they’d only ever heard talk about his hockey, the son of a legend, on his way to become a hockey legend in his own right who looked so sad and small sometimes. Kent was interested in anything not everybody had figured out already. And nobody had managed to figure Jack out so far. They worked well together, they did. But after that night, after Kent sliding next to Jack in his booth with a fresh vodka for him, nudging him and telling him how adorable he was, it was like something shifted. 

Jack gravitated towards Kent anytime they were out now and began giving innocent, safe pieces of himself up in exchange for Kent looking at him fondly, for Kent touching him in less than innocent places. The biggest reward however, was that it translated to the ice. They fit seamlessly, felt each other’s presence, communicated with looks, with minimal gestures. They were lethal.

As they were off the ice. Another night, another time a few too many drinks had Kent leisurely stroking up and down the inside of Jack’s thigh and Jack just burst. He threw his head back to the wall with a thud and a groaned “Kenny, please, I can’t take the teasing anymore,” and Kent looked at him, the fire in his eyes, the stretch of his grin dangerous and took his hand, leading him to a darker, quieter, less populated corner and attacked his mouth and Jack melted.

He’d always shied away from affection. The only ones who’d been there to give it to him had been his parents and being The Biggest Dissapointment made him feel unworthy of theirs, made him cringe, wince or flinch every time they touched him. Which is why they tried to let their feelings show in small, meaningful gestures. Which still had Jack freeze up. Cellies on the ice had always been his most free, his most genuine form of affectation and he’d shared many of those with the boy currently pressing him to the wall. This felt like an extension of it. Like it was the same, but deeper, more intense.  
Kent Parson didn’t manage to make him feel beautiful. Which was as much his own fault as it was Kent’s. But he did make him feel something sharp. Something intense. Something real in a haze of blurry memories and a dull, throbbing pain omnipresent. 

They got even better. The press dared to take the phrase “Wunderkind” up again, tasting it on their tongues and in their writing as something foreign and new, because they hadn’t used it since the publication of Jack’s first baby photos save for mockery. Kent was ecstatic about every piece. Every time their names were linked to the draft, to the NHL, to future Cups. He got high of it, his wildly promising future his drug, while Jack swallowed his down with shaky hands and sloshing water bottles and forced himself to stay calm and cried in Julia’s office with her hand on his knee. 

Alas, the world was unforgiving. The world and hockey and his parents and Kent. The amount of pills he ingested increased with the frequency of the word “draft” used around him, so exponentially in the weeks leading up to the draft. Kent became more and more intense, the possibility of separation haunting his every kiss, haunting every orgasm he tore from Jack’s body or his own. Jack didn’t notice. Jack was smaller even than his body, that was so much smaller than it had once been. Jack was that ugly baby, hunched in on himself. Looking on, but not participating. His life had enough of a routine that he could just.. Follow it. He knew when to speak, when not to, when to do what. Hockey was second nature, even if Kent pulled more weight those last weeks than he’d ever had to before then. He stopped seeing Julia. He could not explain the immensity of the weight pressing his baby shoulders into the dirt and beyond, so he figured he might as well not even try.

He’d never expected it to be this quiet, this calm. It was the day of the draft. He’d just been in this very bathroom with Kent mere hours before, promises of still seeing each other, of both being golden boys (despite your locks, huh, Zimms), of getting there, of both achieving mumbled in between kisses, in the creases of his skin to which he could only nod. He was not present. He did not know where he was, but it was not in his body. It was not where he should be, sitting with his parents. It was here. The bottle of pills burning into his chest. The bathroom he’d always avoided because of its sterile look was more welcoming than any other place in the world could ever be right now, Jack thought idly as he shook pills out in his hand. He was transfixed by the white piling on top of each other, the clicking sound, so he didn’t stop. He only stopped when it was empty and then he threw it to the ground. It was no longer of use to him, nor was it his problem anymore. 

Somebody would deal with it. He looked in the mirror as he took the first pill and was astonished by how steady his hands were. His hands. He looked at the scars, at the veins, thought of all they’d done for him. He looked at himself in the mirror. At this man he didn’t know whether he would ever see again. At this man he didn’t know he would ever be able to love or accept. There were no tears, only mere quiet resignation. Another. He hoped Kent came first. He hoped Kent found himself a boy equally as golden as him. Or a girl. He didn’t know his preference. Another. Had never cared to ask. Another. They would leave his parents alone now. They would leave his family be. They were saved from dealing with him after this, after the Biggest Disappointment Of All, he thought, sinking to the ground.


	2. [draft, Samwell pre-captaincy]

He wakes up in a cold hospital bed, surrounded by beeping. He’s pretty sure this is not the after life. He’s certain he’d feel less horrible there. He blinks his eyes open and sees his parents sitting far enough from him not to hover actively, but close enough to be able to reach. Both of their faces are tear stained and both of them break out in tears anew when they see he’s awake. Bob reaches out a trembling hand and Jack takes it. Breathes in, breathes out to steady himself, but he doesn’t let go. Bob looks at their joined hands, like it’s the best thing he’s ever seen. 

Then he looks up at the horribly pale face of his only child and whispers “Please let us in,” while his wife scrambles to get to Jack’s side. He doesn’t tell them everything. Doesn’t really tell them anything. Realizes they knew most anyway. His life is confined to the square metres of his sterile and clean hospital room for the first couple of weeks and it’s fine by him. There’s enough stimulations and impulses here, combined with what he feels. The hardest and only non-family visit is Julia, who whispers “This is not careful,” before bursting into tears. His parents and her decide that she can’t be his therapist anymore, but she begs him to stay in touch. He promises he will. Takes her hand. Looks her in the eyes and promises it again. Because he feels like he owes her at least that much. 

The following months are filled with harsh withdrawal and tentative improvement. With finding a familiarity, a comfort in physical contact he never thought he’d find. Of rebuilding himself and his family, piece by piece. Of realizing that he’ll never be quite done with this building of his. Letting it sink in that that’s okay. 

Thinking of Kent hurts. He tells his therapists and they tell his parents and somebody keeps Kent away. Or maybe they don’t have to, the most spiteful part of himself says then. Maybe he hasn’t shown anyway. He got drafted first and signed with the Las Vegas Aces. Which is far away. Jack wonders if he got considered by Kent, if he was a factor. He thinks he probably wasn’t. Has learnt that Kent was not really with him, as much as he was not really with Kent. They could give each other some form of relief and companionship, but they both sorely lacked what was needed to give the other a stable, healthy, functional relationship. Sometimes his bed feels too empty, sometimes his southern regions will betray him. Sometimes his heart aches in a way it never has before. But it’s allright. It’s going to be.

His mother tentatively brings up college at some point and Jack looks at her and how she’s steeled herself for this conversation. Looks at his father, who isn’t looking at him, because he’s afraid the quiet hope would be readable too clearly on his face. It is, even in profile. For his son, it is. 

“What do you suggest?” Jack says and his voice is small and his smile only a ghost, but it’s something. 

He gets released and goes home for a couple months, relearns fitting into his family. Relearns being an athlete. Being a hockey player. He’s glad for it, for the respite. But he’s excited to go somewhere new, too. Anxious, but excited. He’s avoided any and all media. Bad Bob’s fired a couple lawsuits again, he knows that much, but he.. He can’t care about that that much anymore. It’s going to snap him like a twig at this point and he doesn’t want to give them that power. Not again. 

His father talks to him about hockey and his mother gushes about Samwell in the weeks leading up to his departure, but he can see the fear in their eyes, can see that they’re holding a lot back. He’s grateful for it. It’s selfish, but he doesn’t think he can handle them unleashing what they’re feeling on him. It might overstimulate him, because his own feelings already do sometimes. 

He arrives in his dorm room and nearly cries with relief that it’s not white, that there’s nothing sterile about it. It’s a start, a good one. When he goes to look out his window, he sees only things he’s never seen before and it makes him lighter when he expected it to make him feel like lead. 

He meets the team and they talk about hockey. Hockey is a safe topic. Hard to exhaust, he tells himself over and over again. He doesn’t need a repeat of what happened with Kent. Doesn't want another person he can’t think of without his heart feeling like it’s falling apart at the carefully repaired seams. 

Shitty is not like Kent. Shitty is not interested in Jack, because nobody has figured him out yet. Shitty is interested in Jack, because Shitty’s interested in everything. And also, because Shitty doesn’t have any boundaries and never shuts up. But mostly because he’s so damn interested. So one day, he comes to stand in front of Jack’s locker stark naked (Jack’s appalled, until he sees he isn’t actually touching it) and tells him that, as his fellow frog that he at least use a nickname for him, because they’re going to be stuck together for a long time. Jack tries not to cringe at the remembrance of how the seniors had tried to give him a nickname the first couple weeks, but nothing had stuck. Shitty had just walked in and introduced himself as Shitty and told them that that was what he’d like to go by, if they could grant him that. The seniors had looked mildly terrorized until the Captain had stepped forward, shook Shitty’s hand and welcomed him to the team. 

“So I’m going to call you Jay-Z. Not because there’s any resemblance, because everybody knows the guy isn’t exactly a looker and you, my guy, definitely are,” and Jack can tell that Shitty’s sentence doesn’t end there, but that he lets the end of it hang in the air for a bit, noticing how Jack is looking anywhere but at him, how it kind of looks like he’s trying to curl up into himself standing and he mostly looks.. Well, uncomfortable. “But it’s catchy,” He catches himself then and goes to hug him. Jack decides to just look at his locker and try not to feel too much down under when Shitty, still naked, hugs him very tightly and yells that he’ll catch him later over his shoulder.

He nestles himself into Jack’s life quietly. Jack couldn’t possibly fathom why, because Shitty’s outgoing and can carry intelligent conversations with pretty much anyone and yet he chooses to come sit in Jack’s dorm after a lecture to tell him what he found interesting or drags Jack with him when he wants to visit the pond. Jack grows attached. And comfortable. Shitty does the things Julia always did, gently nudge his shoulders or back when he was trying to take up less place. He thinks he should introduce them sometime. She might get him hooked on Psychology instead of Law. When he mentions this in passing to Shitty, he sighs exasperated and whispers in his ear “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life, but poetry - beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” He bows and Jack looks thoughtful for a second, before agreeing with him and seeing sense in his decision. Shitty laughs, “That Dead Poets Society reference flew right over your head, didn’t it, you beautiful bastard?” He wheezes out and then drags Jack to his room to watch the movie. 

That’s something he does, which Julia (thankfully) has never done. He is always, always complimenting him on his physical appearance. Loudly, rudely, slyly, genuinely. He’s had them all. And with the increase of those exclamations, the gentle nudges decrease and Jack realizes that it’s snuck up on him that he barely even needs them anymore. 

Rubbing his face dry one morning, he looks in the mirror and he flashes back to the thoughts he had staring at a face resembling so much to this one in a bathroom mirror those years ago and finds in himself that he doesn’t hate the sight of himself anymore. He lets out a surprised huff, chooses to ignore the clenching that seizes his heart and carries on with his day. 

The comments about his appearance spiral out of control when Ransom and Holster arrive the next year. The d-men pair is oddly in sync after mere days and he’s baffled when they take to hanging out with him and Shitty, because where they’re not intellectually out of his league as much as Shits was, they have, like, social super powers or something. It stuns him into silence how many greetings they get when they’re passing campus. Enthused, proper greetings, not the half assed smiles and chin jerks Jack doles out and receives. 

Their love for his behind could be dubbed as problematic, but it’s also amusing. Because it’s light and fun and overdramatic and yelled, like everything the pair does, but there’s a fond undercurrent- there’s the eye contact during or after with which they seem to try to tell him something more than that he has a magnificent ass. 

They throw parties together faster than Jack can brush his teeth most of the time and Shitty always does a valiant effort in dragging him to them and sometimes he even goes. And one day, he’s sitting in the garden of the Haus with Shits and he rests his head against the trunk and there’s no negative thoughts there. There’s relative peace and quiet. And it scares the crap out of him, because it’s something he could lose, but it’s the good kind of scared. And he can’t remember the last time he felt that. He finishes a beer that night, instead of nursing it and sipping it a couple times during the night, and it feels good. It feels good to be this in control. It feels good to be wanted. To be loved. Navigating his body in his new life is trying, but he thinks he’ll try his damned hardest if he gets moments like these.  
That second year, he plays hockey, like he hasn’t.. Since Kent. And everybody notices. And it rattles his bones in the quiet nights, but they still stay together and his skates still feel safe and when he has sex with Camilla Collins a couple times after Winter Screw, it doesn’t feel like he’s fighting to prove something. He doesn’t let himself think of a blond cow lick and a mischievous, biting grin. 

And then there’s Lardo. He’s never told how Shitty found her. Or how she found Shits, because it’s Lards and she honestly would have found him first, he’s always thought. Ransom and Holster don’t know either. None of them care. Lardo is the counterweight to the craziness, to the wild, raucous energy in their little group and Jack finds himself at ease whenever she’s around. She looks at him sometimes, like she understands him and that would have scared the crap out of him not a long time ago. It still makes him scared. Because he doesn’t know whether he’ll ever be sure he deserves people this wonderful, deserves to be loved this deeply. 

He gets voted Captain and it’s the first panic attack that leaves him exhausted for days in a long time. He has pills. He knows he does. He takes one. The one they trust him with. The only one he ever has access to. And he feels like The Biggest Disappointment again for a few hours while Shitty talks to him about something Rans and Holtz had gotten up to earlier and how some dudebro in his lecture earlier hadn’t been able to fucking check his privilege and when he notices that Jack’s breathing has somewhat evened out, he goes to wrap his arms around him and Jack clings to him, like a drowning man. “I can’t even lead myself most days, Shits, how the fuck am I supposed to lead all of you? How am I supposed to be responsible for all of you, when I am barely in control of myself more often than not,” he keeps up a whispered, choked repeat of that same sentiment, while Shitty strokes his hair and hugs him a little tighter.

Shitty knows what to do, because they’d talked about it once when Shitty had invited himself over for a sleepover, not an uncommon occurrence when he noticed Jack’s smiles getting more strained, and curled up around him, he’d asked him what he could do for him, because he wanted to help in any way he could. So Jack had told him what he was most comfortable with, stuttering through his sentences, because despite Shits having been the one to ask, it still felt like asking for more than he was comfortable asking for and receiving.

When his throat is hoarse and all his muscles strained, Shitty taps his chin to make him look at him.

“Everything you just said, makes you the best Captain I could ever play for. Because you will never take anything we do for granted, never take any one of us for granted. You will give us your all, noticeably, and that will inspire us to give you our all. You are a goddamn treasure, Jay-Z, and I will be honoured to be on that ice in this jersey and be able to call you my captain.” 

And Jack, who didn’t think he could possibly have energy or tears left, feels happy tears leaking out of his eyes and he smiles so big his mouth might split. These are the moments that make it all worth it, he thinks, letting the tears flow freely, because he wasn’t sure if he’d ever had happy tears before. 

He.. He gets to have that now. He has all these guys, all these wonderful and hard working guys who not only value him for his hockey anymore, but also for his leadership. Jack would be lying if he said he wasn’t at least slightly overwhelmed with it all. But Shitty is beaming at him, his face close and Jack knows that his friends have his back. That with their help, he might be able to do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a) Don't shoot me for this. 
> 
> b) There will be [Samwell captaincy sophomore year], [Samwell captaincy senior year, graduation] and [graduation, season opener with the Falcs]
> 
> c) Have a good day. 
> 
> d) I made myself cry with this, too.


End file.
